Barack Obama, Islam’s Apologist-in-Chief

September 11, 2014 By Shane Vander Hart

I didn’t watch President Obama’s remarks on “Islamic State” IS/ISIS/ISIL (do we have our bases covered?) until this morning so I know I’m Johnny-come-lately as far as talking heads are concerned. I wasn’t exactly pining to give up time last night to hear our President’s newly found strategy on this new threat. There is a lot of goodcommentaryon his strategy that I’ll pointyouto.

What I find incredulous with his remarks is that President Obama almost immediately launched into a defense of Islam.

Now let’s make two things clear: ISIL is not “Islamic.” No religion condones the killing of innocents. And the vast majority of ISIL’s victims have been Muslim. And ISIL is certainly not a state. It was formerly al Qaeda’s affiliate in Iraq, and has taken advantage of sectarian strife and Syria’s civil war to gain territory on both sides of the Iraq-Syrian border. It is recognized by no government, nor by the people it subjugates. ISIL is a terrorist organization, pure and simple. And it has no vision other than the slaughter of all who stand in its way.

ISIS/ISIL absolutely is Islamic. What authority does he have to say otherwise?

Really? Islam doesn’t condone the killing of innocents?

Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush. But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due, then leave their way free. Lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful. (Quran 9:5)

This in the midst of narrative on treaties as Muslim apologists would state. Sure, because this passage isn’t open to interpretation and rather open-ended. Why would they need a treaty with “idolaters” in the first place? Are we supposed to ignore the early Muslim conquests that facilitated the spread of Islam and the first caliphate established by Muhammad himself?

Then we have the same chapter in the Quran say lay out the extortion of “unbelievers.” (Does this sound familiar?)

Fight against such of those who have been given the Scripture as believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, and forbid not that which Allah hath forbidden by His messenger, and follow not the Religion of Truth, until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low, (Quran 9:29).

My point isn’t to say every single Muslim is violent or that there are no moderate Muslims, but let’s not pretend that ISIS/ISIL’s actions don’t have any basis in the Quran. Perhaps they are misinterpreting it, I don’t claim to be an Islamic scholar, but I don’t think it is the President’s job to be an apologist either.

In President Obama’s defense, he’s not the first U.S. President to do this. President Bill Clinton once said that the Taliban’s abuse of women and children was a “perversion of Islam.” President George W. Bush after 9/11 said that Islamic terrorists “violate the fundamental tenets of the Islamic faith.”

What any reasonable person can see is that moderate Muslims have utterly failed to keep Islam’s extremists in check, and frankly I don’t know of any Islamic country where persecution of religious minorities does not exist whether that state is an official theocracy or not. Freedom of religion does not coexist with Sharia law and is strained in countries with a majority Muslim population.

So if there is a battle for the soul of Islam, so to speak, moderate Muslims are losing. We need our President to be the Commander-in-Chief, lead on foreign policy and to lose the role of being Islam’s apologist-in-chief.

Shane Vander Hart is the founder and editor-in-chief of Caffeinated Thoughts. He is also the President of 4:15 Communications, LLC, a social media & communications consulting/management firm. Prior to this Shane spent 20 years in youth ministry serving in church, parachurch, and school settings. He has also served as an interim pastor and is a sought after speaker and pulpit fill-in. Shane has been married to his wife Cheryl since 1993 and they have three kids. Shane and his family reside near Des Moines, IA.

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About Shane Vander Hart

Shane Vander Hart is the founder and editor-in-chief of Caffeinated Thoughts. He is also the President of 4:15 Communications, LLC, a social media & communications consulting/management firm. Prior to this Shane spent 20 years in youth ministry serving in church, parachurch, and school settings. He has also served as an interim pastor and is a sought after speaker and pulpit fill-in. Shane has been married to his wife Cheryl since 1993 and they have three kids. Shane and his family reside near Des Moines, IA.

Yeah… apples and oranges my friend. KKK and Army of God are not mainstream, nor have had influence within the church. Church leaders have for years condemned racism, and were the leaders in the civil rights movement as well as the abolitionist movement.

Re. OT references context is king. That command was for a specific people for a specific time in history. How many Christians do you see blowing themselves up? How many Christians dance in the street when there is a Muslim massacre? How many Muslims have Christians beheaded?

You have to go back to the Crusades which was more about power and land than religion.

My primary point is that Obama doesn’t need to make an apology for them. Are all Muslims like ISIS? Of course not, but unlike the Church where the KKK and Army of God have not taken root, Muslim extremists have taken root and moderate Muslims are silent.

Mark 5:17 – “And they began to beg Jesus to depart from their region.”
If you are going to bring scripture into this, get the reference right.

Just for the record, any one who swears allegiance to ISIS after what thy have done these last few months deserves no mercy in my opinion. My point is 99.999% of Muslims are peaceful law abiding citizens. Obama condemned ISIS. What more should he have done?

Groups like ISIS and the KKK thrive in times of chaos. ISIS is where there are today because of the destabilized area that they are in. The KKK were at their height after the civil war during reconstruction when much of the south was in ruins. Hitler rose to power because Germany had just had its butt kicked in the WWI.

You will never convince me that there ever was a time in human history where killing innocent children could be seen as anything but immoral. I questioned the story of Noah at a very young age. The thought of little babies drowning seemed so horrendous to me. If someone were to claim that abortion today is all part of God’s plan, on what grounds can you challenge him/her if you truly believe there are times when killing babies is moral?

I just saw an article about Muslims speaking out. Many are actually speaking out. It just doesn’t make the news. Most of the people ISIS is killing are Muslims who don’t agree with them. Google [Muslims condemning ISIS].

I did mess up on the scripture. It should be Matt 5:17. I apologize for that.

Matthew 5:17-20 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

ISIS is a terrible group, but ISIS represents an extremely small percent of Muslims. The vast majority of Muslims, like the vast majority of Christians, are nice people. When the Christians raped and killed all those Muslims in Serbia-Croatia back in the 1990’s, did you condemn all Christianity? This was the first I had heard of ethnic cleansing.

Isn’t David Duke a regular traveler to Muslim countries? Are you really unaware of the major differences in the numbers alone of any atrocities perpetrated by Islamists and Christians? And, since when did communists in Serbia-Croatia become Christians? Serbia-Croatia was the first time you heard of ethnic cleansing?

There’s no hard evidence for the media-hyped rapes in the Bosnian war. It was full-scale propaganda. The UN never rescued/found any of these victims, none was taken to a hospital to gather evidence, there was no increase in the birthrate, etc.

The hyped stories often proved untrue: a picture of a woman with a 2-month old full term baby featured in early January in a major U.S. magazine was holding a child conceived before the war already started. Yet the story had the rape taking place in late April.

Many journalists who did these Balkan atrocity stories were later found to be liars such as Jack Kelly of USA Today, who was found, years later, to have many FAKE stories. There were other journalist who received Pulitzer prizes for their writings during the war on stories which later were found untrue: such as the Serbs accused of killing Bosnian Muslims who were later discovered (by accident) to be alive and unharmed and had actually been serving in the military in Sarajevo the whole time the Sarajevo Muslim courts were trying the Serbs for their deaths!

I kept track of the situation in Bosnia when it happened. Just like the “Arab Spring,” it seemed to be a really bad idea to support the ones we (Americans) did. And I do remember the propaganda. And, I remember most Americans believing it after watching it on TV. The two groups had been fighting over that land for a thousand years, with one outcome, until we backed the other side.

I am glad you didn’t fall for the propaganda – which was often quite sloppy yet the kind that fools the masses. Bosnia was in fact a 4-way civil war: you also had the Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Muslims, who were initial allies, turning against each other only some months after the war began. They fought an intense 16-month war which was only ended by western pressure: the west/U.S. wanted them allied against the Serbs who were the real target.
Furthermore, there were some Bosnian Muslims (10s of thousands) in Northwest Bosnia who had an autonomous area and they were actually allied and friendly with the Serbs. Their leader, Fikret Abdic, actually won the most votes for president before the war. In some kind of obscure deal, however, he stepped aside and allowed Alija Izetbegovic, an Islamist-hegemonic (falsely advertised by the mainstream as a moderate), to be the (unelected) president. And perhaps the agreement was for him to be allowed that autonomous territory.
But towards the last year of the war Izetbegovic’s forces attacked Abdic and his moderate Muslims and forced them out of Bosnia into Croatia, where they were trapped for months in “chicken coop”-like conditions. Eventual they were allowed to leave for third countries and there’s been some fights/attacks in these other countries between those different factions of Bosnian Muslims.
This is not to mention the large number of Mujahideen who came and fought for the Muslims in BiH. They had Pakistani, Chechen, Yemeni, Afghan and many others there. There were also mercenaries from European countries who mostly fought for the Croats or Muslims. Some have even written books on their experiences and admit to killings of civilians. For instance Scottish mercenary, John MacPhee, details in his book “The Silent Cry” some of his killings of Serbs – including Serbian women and girls. He also admits to killing at least one young Muslim woman who was walking towards their (Croat forces’) line when the Croats were fighting the Muslims. I noticed he liaisoned with the British UN forces stationed in Bosnia – and there are clues to suggest he was actually an operative of the British government. Many western military men temporarily “retired” and fought as “mercenaries” for the Croats and/or Muslims.
These western mercenaries and agents (from France, the UK, Canada, etc.) usually had military backgrounds, so it seems like it was a technicality to have them become “retired” so they (or their countries) didn’t get into legal troubles over participating in the war. There were also “former” CIA agents involved in weapons smuggling to the Croats and Muslims.
There were heavy supplies of Iranian arms and some were even covertly brought in by the U.S. military once it created a “no fly zone” it patrolled.

I certainly haven’t kept track of the situation, like you have. I read a while back, that we still have peace keeping forces over there. Also, at least one of the World Wars was started in that area by an assassination of a head of state.

You are believing too much of the propaganda about the rapes. It was the Serbian Christian women who FIRST sent documentation to the UN Security Council in early fall 1992. Before then there was NONE of the rape claims by the mass media.

But after Serbia sent this document – which had 800 names of Serbian women – both first and last – such a document the Muslims have never been able to present for all the hype – well suddenly the Muslim government and mainstream media claimed a huge number of raped women by Serbs WITHOUT ANY DOCUMENTATION WHATSOEVER.

After that announcement it became a media sensation and journalists would push any claim.

Yet there WAS NO HARD EVIDENCE against Serbs. No DNA, no rape babies, no medical records (abortions, injuries) are presented. Merely stories, propaganda, and films based on fiction.

There was NO increase in Bosnia’s birthrate and there definitely would have been if there were so many rapes and force pregnancies. Remember the rape propaganda said they women were kept until it was too late for an abortion.

Well that was what some of the SERBIAN WOMEN documentation claims said – not all but many – so we know where the Muslims were taking their stories from.

Yet they used preposterous numbers of 50,000 – which would have definitely left some hard evidence and definitely and increase in the birthrate.

Many of the claims against Serbian Christians were SHEER LIES and purposeful self-serving propaganda as the WEST was covertly supporting the breakup of Yugoslavia and financing and smuggling weapons to them throughout the whole war.

Austrian and Germany banks as well as the CIA/”retired” CIA personnel were just some of the players involved.

Serbs are actually the most ethnically cleansed of all. The Bosnian Muslims made up the same percentage of Bosnia-Hercegovina after the war ended as when it began – actually their population went up according to the CIA factbook.
So they ethnically cleansed and killed as good as they got.
Now they have joined ISIS.
And back in WWII the Bosnian Muslims were a special project of Himmler, who formed some pro-Nazi divisions with them.
Their wartime president, Alija Izetbegovic, was part of a pro-Nazi youth movement during WWII and he was jailed after the war for violence against Serbs and for seeking help from Islamic fundamentalist and terrorist groups for a Muslim Bosnian all the way back in the early 1980’s.
So years before war broke out he and his cabal were jailed for seeking and independent Bosnia under Muslim domination.

The Bosnian Muslims also decapitated Serbs and roasted them alive – I’ve seen authentic pictures with the Serbian victims fully named.
The western media covered up that fact.
PLUS the UN records and testimony of David Harland (former UN officer during the war) says that the Bosnian Muslim government in Sarajevo wasn’t distributing the food the UN was sending to the civilians. The government gave it to their military in the city and some went to the black market, but the majority 60% wasn’t distributed at all and the UN believed the Muslim-run Sarajevo government was stockpiling it.

So if there were food shortages it wasn’t because food wasn’t getting in – UN convoys were regularly going to Sarajevo – but because the government chose not to allow the civilians to have it.
The government purposely deprived the citizenry of food so it could make Serbs look at fault.
They did the same with the utilities: the UN reports blamed the government for interfering with the utilities more than the war itself.
So things were purposely made worse for the government to use civilian suffering to SELL the war for the cameras/media.
Not to mention the staged attacks – with cameras often pre-set-up in advance at perfectly safe distance yet close enough and aimed to get the action as it happened.

“Do you really believe anything Christians have ever done equal what ISIS is now doing?”
Since you asked:

Google [Columbus and the Beginning of Genocide in the “New World”].

Google [Bartolome de las Casas “Of the Island of Hispaniola” 1542] – He was a priest, writing to those back in Spain:
“The Christians, with their horses and swords and lances, began to slaughter and practice strange cruelty among them. They penetrated into the country and spared neither children nor the aged, nor pregnant women, nor those in child labour, all of whom they ran through the body and lacerated, as though they were assaulting so many lambs herded in their sheepfold.

They made bets as to who would slit a man in two, or cut off his head at one blow: or they opened up his bowels. They tore the babes from their mothers’ breast by the feet, and dashed their heads against the rocks. Others they seized by the shoulders and threw into
the rivers, laughing and joking, and when they fell into the water they exclaimed: “boil
body of so and so!” They spitted the bodies of other babes, together with their mothers
and all who were before them, on their swords.

They made a gallows just high enough for the feet to nearly touch the ground, and by
thirteens, in honour and reverence of our Redeemer and the twelve Apostles, they put
wood underneath and, with fire, they burned the Indians alive.

They wrapped the bodies of others entirely in dry straw, binding them in it and setting
fire to it; and so they burned them. They cut off the hands of all they wished to take alive,
made them carry them fastened on to them, and said:
“Go and carry letters”: that is; take the news to those who have fled to the mountains.”

The crucial difference between the actions of the Islamic
State and Christians committing atrocities is this: are those actions supported
by the doctrines of their respective religions?
In terms of the examples you used of atrocities committed by Christians,
show me where Jesus taught that Christians should act like that. On the other hand, in terms of the Islamic
State beheading folks, killing women and children, and enslaving female
captives, these actions are completely supported by Islamic doctrine. That is the reason the “moderate” Muslims are
quiet about this. Islamic doctrine is on
the side of the Islamic State, not the “moderate” Muslims.

Read your Old Testament. Killing children because God told you to was immoral then the same as it is now. Jesus said he did not come to change the law. There are people right here in Iowa who would have no problem implementing the death penalty for homosexuals, because the Bible says to do it. There are those who may disagree, but they don’t condemn it. Christians, like Muslims, come in a wide variety of beliefs. A few are very radical.

BTW, as I again stated here already, Muslims are speaking out against it. You just won’t see it reported on Fox News, because that would go against their storyline.

I am not anti-religion, because I do think Jesus taught to love on another. I am anti-fundamentalist, because whether they be Muslims, Christians, or Jews history has shown when they get the freedom to act as they wish they do not follow Jesus.

Bruce, your story as to why you post what you post has changed over the months. And your latest Biblical quotes were right off an “atheist interprets the Bible” website. Christians who are interested in what the Bible says have pastors and Christian scholars and writers help them with the parts they don’t understand.

The Jesuits in Quebec were at war with the British here in America and had the Indians fight the Americans. That has more to do with what is happening today, than what happened on Hispaniola. So, I know more about the one subject and not as much about the other. I do know the New World Indians were fierce and committed atrocities even the Spanish could not believe. You do know the Europeans came to the New World looking for a new route to India, since all of their trade routes both land and sea going east, had been cut off by the Muslim Ottoman Turks in 1453. Merchants had been trading with India since Biblical times, and that trade was cut off. People in Europe were starving. The Turks committed horrible atrocities everywhere they went, but especially to the Galatians (Celts) in what today is Turkey. Spain at the time of Columbus, could barely finance his trip due to the war they just had in their country, expelling the Muslims. The Muslims were in Europe, and not for the first time.

Lots of people have stated they don’t like history because it is all about war. I did not attempt to justify anything. I am trying to give you information, so you can make more informed judgments about human beings and the past. But, it is like pulling teeth. You have a closed mind.